Michigan Teen Sells 17,328 Boxes of Girl Scout Cookies

DETROIT – A Girl Scout has financed her trip to Europe with Thin Mints and Do-Si-Dos, possibly breaking a U.S. record in the process.

Jennifer Sharpe, a 15-year-old from Dearborn, Michigan, sold 17,328 boxes of Girl Scout cookies this year, which shatters the old record for her local Girl Scouts group and is believed to be a record, though the national organization, Girl Scouts of the USA, doesn't track individual sales.

"It's always been one of those goals I wanted to accomplish," Sharpe said Wednesday.

The annual cookies sales are the main way in which members of the Girl Scouts raise money for activities such as trips. For a limited time every year, Girl Scouts sell the cookies, which this year cost $3.50 a box.

They come in such varieties as Do-si-dos — peanut butter sandwich cookies and Thin Mints — a thin, mint-flavored wafer covered in chocolate, which are the most popular.

Michelle Tompkins, spokeswoman for New York-based Girl Scouts of the USA, called the feat "amazing" but said there's no national record on the books.

The two bakeries that make the cookies sold by Girl Scouts said Sharpe sold more than anyone this year, according to Dianne Thomas, spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts of Metro Detroit.

"They are aware when a council has a super seller," Thomas said.

Sharpe sold cookies every day on a street corner with help from her mother, Pam Sharpe.

"We were always there, we never closed," Pam Sharpe said. "At one point, Jenny got really sick and we did shut down early, and we heard about it the next day."

Sharpe's Girl Scout group raised about $21,000 — about $14,000 by Sharpe alone — in cookie sales that will pay for its 10-day trip to Europe this winter.

Despite selling thousands of boxes, Jennifer Sharpe said her feelings about the famous cookies haven't changed.